D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

I followed him out, saying, “It could have been worse.”

“Yeah,” he replied, eyes squinting. “I know that’s true. But it doesn’t seem true. The whole thing smells like a nightmare cookout.”

We sat there on the edge of the porch for a moment, just resting, watching the leaves waving on their branches. “I wonder what his name was,” I said finally.

“Who cares?” Andy replied.

“I do. You should too.”

“He tried to kill me. Or change me. Or whatever.”

“Yeah,” I answered. The real Andy was back now, and it finally felt like the two of us could talk.

“You know, I talked to him last night.”

“You did?” he asked, incredulous.

“I did. I think he knew he was dying. Something about how weak he was. It was like he was back in control again.”

Andy kicked at the dirt around his foot. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know. You’re part of the reason he’s in there right now.”

“I didn’t fucking start this,” he spat.

“No. No, you didn’t. But you broke that globe.”

“Oh, come on…”

“No,” I said. “You could have gotten us both killed. We were almost out when you pulled that shit.”

The other Andy, the wild one, would have yelled back, or slapped me, or maybe even worse. But this was Andy Andy.

“I don’t know why I did it,” he said furtively.

“I think I do.”

“Well then,” he said, “tell me.”

“When you were… dreaming. When that voice was talking to you. Did it feel like it was trying to change you?”

“I dunno,” he replied. Then, after a pause, he said, “Yes. I think so. No. I know so.”

“I thought so. He,” I said, pointing behind me to the open window, “used to be like you. The last Thief snuck into his house while he was asleep, took him away from his mom, locked him in a cage, and sucked out everything good.”

“What are you saying?”

I glared at him. “I think you know. You were the next in line. If I hadn’t found you, then in a few weeks or months or even years, it would have been you sneaking into houses.”

I think he already knew this, at least in some way. But hearing it laid out like that, the logic of it was impossible to deny. It floored him, and I could see the other half threatening to burst out and have his way. He closed his eyes, and he seemed to be fighting with himself, like a sick man wrestling with his urge to vomit. The moment faded, and when his eyes opened again, I knew Andy was still in charge.

“There was something else,” I added once he had calmed down.

“What now?”

“Me,” I said plainly. “I mean, when he touched me, there was something he liked. Something… new. I think it was because I’m a girl, but… I’m just not sure.”

“Come on,” he said, standing back up. “We can’t change any of this, not yet anyway. So let’s just get this over with.”

We slipped the rest of the sleeping bag down over him quickly, both of us pretending not to notice when the zipper rubbed the flesh from his arms, peeling it off like a layer of old onion. He was, as I feared, too long to fit, but he was thin enough to fold up at the knees. We shimmied the bag the rest of the way and zipped it closed. Then, with me on the back end and Andy on the front, we lifted him out. It was a slow, messy trip through the house, mainly because of me. I was, without question, the weak link in the project.

“Just drop it,” Andy said halfway down the hall after I struggled to pick our load up for the third time.

“I can do it,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Just drop it,” he barked. “I can just drag it.”

The sleeping bag left lines in the carpet which I followed along and scuffed up with my shoe. I considered getting the vacuum out, but me cleaning house on a sick day would have sent up about a dozen red flags. When Andy had dragged him to the back door, he stopped to catch his breath.

“Go on,” he said between huffs. “Check it out. Make sure there’s nobody out there.”

It was a school day, so the coast was clear from kids, and pretty much all the adults would be at work. Down the clearing of the backyard was a small creek, and just past that was the set of apartments. Only a few of the windows pointed our way, but we knew at least a few parents who worked the night shift. That, along with mailmen, deliveries, and stuff like that, meant there was no way to be truly sure it was clear.

“It looks good,” I told him.

“Looks good or is good?”

“I think it looks good,” I said.

He stomped past me and peeked out the door himself. He knew I was right, of course, but he just had to check for himself.

“Come on,” he said, picking the bag up. “No stopping. Just move as quick as you can, and if you have to rest, just drop it and I’ll drag it the rest of the way.”

Never in my life had I felt so visible and open, as if there were spotlights on both of us. I’m not sure how long it took us to make the dash from porch to basement, but it couldn’t have been more than ten seconds. But those ten seconds were enough for my imagination to conjure up dozens of scenarios, each worse than the last. Patrolling cops. A concerned dad. A nosy neighbor. Any of them were enough to shut us down.

A small part of me welcomed the idea of being caught. Simply thinking about it was inviting, because it might mean we would finally have some help with this absurd turn of events. We were, despite everything that had happened, still just kids, and I relished the daydream of a grownup stepping in and telling us what to do. But that was just my daylight voice, the energetic, glass-half-full voice that told me all of this would be okay in the end. The other part of my mind, the realist if you will, told me that the more people involved, the worse for everyone. I would have loved Dad’s help, but the second he knew, his life was on the line as well.

“Shit,” Andy said a few feet from the basement door.

“What?” I asked, glancing around for whatever it was he had seen.

“The door!” he barked. “Why didn’t you open the fucking door?”

“You didn’t ask me to.”

About three feet away, Andy dropped the sleeping bag with a thud as he scrambled to get the basement open. It wasn’t locked, mainly because there wasn’t anything in there worth stealing, but it did have a jerry-rigged handle made of wire and a length of wood, just enough to keep the wind from blowing it open. Normally, it was the sort of thing you could flip open with your eyes closed, but now, in this pressure cooker of stress, Andy couldn’t find a way to open it. He was cursing under his breath, his face was turning red, and I realized, almost too late, that the other Andy was about to appear, threatening to burst through the small cracks in my brother’s resolve.

“Move,” I said from over his shoulder, but he pushed me away with a single strong arm. He was shaking the door now, pulling it like a wild monkey trying to break out of a cage.

“Stop.”

He didn’t hear me. He didn’t hear anything. All at once, he gave up on the handle altogether and began punching the wooden planks with his bare knuckles, each blow echoing through the neighborhood.

“Jesus, Andy, stop it!”

His knuckles were red, cracking, bleeding, and with each new punch, he left a bloody print. In seconds, there were three knuckle-prints, then six, then eight, all as I grabbed at his shoulder, pulling him, trying and failing to draw him away from the edge of madness, to drag him back to me.

“Dammit, stop, please, just stop!”

Before I knew it, I had hit him on the back of the head, reaching up and swinging my fist down like a hammer. It shot a bolt of pain up my elbow, but it at least got his attention. He turned, his bloodshot eyes locking on mine, and he swung. The world went spotty as I heard the crunch in my jaw. There was the ground, the gravel, the dirt, rising up to meet me. I hit hard, but I didn’t feel anything other than the slight humming throb in my ears. For some strange reason, I remember seeing an anthill just in front of my eyes, and in my swirling, woozy confusion, I worried that they might try to crawl into my mouth. There was a voice, distant, like it was speaking through a pillow, saying the same panicked thing over and over again.